Health

In August 2007, Blue Ventures opened a family planning clinic in the village of Andavadoaka to provide access to reproductive health services to women in the community, in particular where there was an unmet demand for family planning. Over the last 2 years, this project has grown steadily, and now forms a fully integrated part of Velondriake's work.

Madagascar, amongst the ‘hottest of the hot' global biodiversity hotspots, exhibits exceptional concentrations of endemic species gravely threatened by devastating loss of habitat. The country also has one of the world's fastest growing populations and nearly half of the country's population is currently under fifteen years of age. Only one in five women in union has access to contraception despite government programmes to promote family planning. Rapid growth of coastal populations, whose doubling time is approximately 10-15 years, poses a severe threat to the future sustainability of the country's extensive coral reefs and other marine habitats, upon which the livelihoods, culture and future economic wellbeing of coastal communities depend.

These issues are being directly addressed in the Velondriake region through an integrated Population, Health and Environment (PHE) initiative. Working in close partnership with regional health institutions and sexual and reproductive health NGOs, this initiative aims to empower and enable individuals to make their own reproductive health choices, and protect themselves against STIs. It is doing this through the provision of sexual and reproductive health services in 24 villages along the south coast of Madagascar. This clinical service is supported by a programme of community education, which draws upon social marketing techniques to raise awareness, enabling individuals to make their own reproductive health choices. The educational interventions used include the use of community theatre, sporting and cultural events, peer-led education and promotional merchandising. As well as proving highly effective, these have been very popular with local communities.

First launched in 2007, Velondriake's sexual and reproductive health initiative has been integrated into the protected area's diverse field-based conservation programmes. By developing reproductive health programmes in parallel with existing conservation efforts, the project benefits from established working partnerships and relationships between communities and NGO representatives.

This pioneering, integrated approach to conservation and sexual and reproductive health offers opportunities for these different interventions to work synergistically, enabling far more effective achievement of the projects' objectives than could be achieved if these projects were carried out in isolation.

Velondriake's PHE programme is part-funded by the Optimum Population Trust's 'PopOffsets' project http://www.popoffsets.com/